Environmental impacts of aqueous fire fighting foams — an overview

Aqueous fire fighting foams (AFFF) are water based foams used for suppression of hydrocarbon fires frequently containing surfactants such as sodium alkyl sulfate and fluorosurfactants such as fluorotelomers, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). AFFFs have undesirable environmental impacts on the account of the fluorosurfactants used in their formulations. Among these, PFOS and PFOA were found to be extremely persistent in the environment and bioaccumulate in living organisms even from the Arctic (Wang et al., 2009). PFOS and PFOA appear to possess toxicity, has endocrine disrupting activity, and carcinogenicity (Beach et al., 2006). Efforts were underway to identify and develop more environmentally safer firefighting chemicals. Continuous research has led to the development of AFFFs which do not include PFOS as the fire fighting active ingredient. However, the manufacturers do not list the chemical composition of the newly formulated foams enabling much difficulty in the assessment of the environmental impact that could be caused. (author)